The MV Lady Chandra I was virtually at the Skeldon wharf on Tuesday when it was intercepted by a Surinamese gunboat with eight soldiers which then called for back-up boats and forced the sugar transport vessel to Nickerie.
Captain of the MV Lady Chandra 1, Arnold Garraway made this disclosure in a telephone interview with Stabroek News while he and his crew were returning to Guyana from Nickerie mid-afternoon yesterday.
Garraway also disclosed that when he was in the Suriname lock-ups on Tuesday, a captain of a Guyanese fishing vessel shared the cell with him. The captain and the crew of another vessel which had been seized a week earlier was also released and his vessel returned to Guyana without their catch, shortly after the MV Lady Chandra 1 was escorted by a pilot vessel from Port Nickerie yesterday.
He added that shortly before they left Nickerie yesterday a third Guyanese captain and crew were also given the go ahead to return to Guyana. The captain of that crew, he said, was from Number 65 Village on the Corentyne and they had been held for almost a week. In their case, he said the captain had to face the court in Paramaribo where he was made to pay a fine before he was released.
Relating his experience, Garraway, who said that he had been plying the route regularly over the past thirteen years transporting bulk sugar from the Skeldon terminal for export, said it was the first time that he was pulled in by the Surinamese authorities.
He and his crew had left Port Georgetown shortly before midnight on Monday, October 13. It was about 12:35 pm on Tuesday that they were stopped by the Surinamese gunboat.
He said MV Lady Chandra I was “right up near to the wharf” at Skeldon when a Surinamese gunboat with about eight soldiers accosted the vessel. The Surinamese coastguards, about eight, boarded the vessel and told them they were in Suriname waters and that they have to go to Nickerie.
“We say we are not going to Nickerie,” he said and explained the journey they were on. They told him that the MV Lady Chandra I could not go to Skeldon because they were in Surinamese territory. He told them that he and his crew had been travelling on the river carrying out the same tasks for the past 13 to 14 years and they were never harassed. They told him that Guyanese would have to stop using the river. Feeling indignant, he said he asked them if “we have to dig another channel to go about our business.”
He said he never stopped the vessel. Because of the resistance, he said they called for backup and two other gunboats arrived with more soldiers and policemen. “They surrounded the boat,” he said. Those who boarded his vessel asked for his documents and that of the vessel and they confiscated them. They were returned after he was released.
In the meantime, he said that he called the Guyana National Shipping Corporation (GNSC), which had contracted the vessel to transport the sugar on behalf of the Guyana Sugar Corporation, and the owner of the vessel Kampta Persaud to inform them about their whereabouts. He said he had received a telephone call from the Guyana coastguard, which promised to call back but they never did.
When they got to Nickerie, he said that as captain, he was the only one held in the lock-up. The others had to remain on the boat. “They (the Surinamese authorities) never allowed them to go ashore,” he said.
He spent from Tuesday evening to Wednesday evening in the lock-up sharing the space with the captain of the Guyanese fishing boat, who was released on Thursday. He had been held even before Garraway in the concrete cell which had no bed and no roof. “If the rain had fallen, I don’t know what would have happened to us,” he said. They gave them food but he said that he could not eat and only drank the liquid.
When they were leaving yesterday, he said that the captain for the fishing boat who had been taken to Paramaribo had been released and he too was preparing to return to Guyana. The catches of both vessels had been confiscated.
“Somebody has to do
something”
Based on discussions with the captain who was incarcerated with him, he said it would appear as though a number of vessels have been seized in recent weeks and nobody in government seems to know “what is going on. Nobody can’t go about their regular business, or, even go home in peace? They harassing everybody. Somebody has to do something,” he said adding, “I don’t know what the government is doing but we have to get some assurances.”
Guyana has deemed the seizure of the vessel as another act of aggression and has registered its protest in a note verbale but it has had no response from the Suriname government.
Suriname is contending that the MV Lady Chandra I sailed the Corentyne River without a Surinamese pilot on board as requested by the Maritime Authority of Suriname (MAS), which in May 2006 restarted the piloting of (international) ships on the Corentyne River.
However, President Bharrat Jagdeo has said that Guyana does not recognize Suriname’s administrating the waterway. He said that the Corentyne River was a border river on which both countries should have user rights. In the case of Suriname, he said that the neighbouring country was trying to impose sovereignty unilaterally over the river even though Guyana has indicated a willingness to discuss the issue.
Garraway and his crew were scheduled to pick up a cargo of sugar from the Skeldon terminal last evening and leave there this morning for Port Georgetown.
